How we deal with your complaint
What happens when we get your complaint
When we receive your complaint we will usually write to you to acknowledge it within five working days explaining what will happen next. If you do not hear from us within that time, please telephone our Advice Team.
We will first check to see if you have made a complaint to the school and whether they have had a reasonable chance to deal with it. Complaints usually need to go though all stages of a school’s complaints procedure before we can consider them.
If we are satisfied that the school has had a reasonable opportunity of considering your complaint, your case will be allocated to an investigator. Investigators take most decisions on the Ombudsman’s behalf. The investigator will contact you as soon as possible after receiving your complaint to find out more about it, what you are hoping to achieve and to explain what will happen next. In most cases the investigator will try to get in touch with you by telephone, so if possible please give us a contact number where you can be reached during the day.
Checking the law
First we have to decide whether the law allows us to investigate your complaint. Usually we can make this decision quickly, but sometimes we need more information from you or the school involved.
If the law does not allow us to investigate your complaint, we will tell you as soon as we can. We will usually give you a chance to comment before we make a final decision, unless it is clear from the start that the law does not allow us to consider your complaint.
We must tell schools about all complaints made against them, even if we decide not to investigate. We will send a copy of your complaint and our decision letter to the school.
What happens if we can investigate your complaint
We will investigate your complaint as far as we think we have to, so that we can reach a fair decision.
The first step is usually to send your complaint to the school and ask for its comments and any other information we need. We may also need to:
- get further information from you, the school, or other people
- examine the school’s files, or
- meet you, the school headteacher or other people.
The Ombudsman has the legal power to get evidence from the school and other people.
During the investigation we will give you a chance to comment on what the school has said about your complaint. When we think we have looked at enough information to be able to come to a fair decision, we will usually write to you to tell you what our decision is likely to be. At this stage we will give you a chance to comment or provide any further information you want us to consider.
When we have made a final decision we will write to you and explain the reasons for it – we will also send a copy of our letter to the school.
Please note that we will not routinely acknowledge correspondence from you.
How long it will take
All complaints will take a different amount of time depending on the seriousness of the matter or how long it takes to gather the information we need. We will make a decision on your complaint as quickly as we possibly can.
The investigator will keep you informed of progress throughout every stage of your complaint.
Date Updated: 16/04/10